


a catalog of non-definitive acts

by Benevolent_Atlas31



Series: litany [1]
Category: Avatar: The Last Airbender
Genre: Badass Katara (Avatar), Badass Toph Beifong, Eventual Katara/Zuko (Avatar), F/M, Hurt Sokka (Avatar), Implied Katara/Zuko (Avatar), Katara (Avatar)-centric, Minor Aang/Toph Beifong, Minor Sokka/Suki, Pre-Katara/Zuko (Avatar), Protective Toph Beifong, Stubborn Katara (Avatar), Toph Beifong and Zuko are Siblings, Toph Being Awesome, everyone is TIRED and deserves NAPS, everyone is hurt actually, it's been a big day
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-08-29
Updated: 2020-08-29
Packaged: 2021-03-06 16:02:05
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,989
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26171647
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Benevolent_Atlas31/pseuds/Benevolent_Atlas31
Summary: They make it through three separate decrees, a food run through the royal kitchens, and a makeshift-flying-bison daycare before collapsing in the nearest room with a bed.They fought, they won, and now they are just sotired.+(or, Katara heals everyone after the final battle andthinks.)
Relationships: Aang/Toph Beifong, Katara & The Gaang (Avatar), Katara/Zuko (Avatar), Sokka/Suki (Avatar), all implied, if you squint
Series: litany [1]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1900549
Comments: 8
Kudos: 131





	a catalog of non-definitive acts

They make it through three separate decrees, a food run through the royal kitchens, and a makeshift-flying-bison daycare before collapsing in the nearest room with a bed. 

They fought, they won, and now they are just so _tired_. 

(The three decrees are simple but seem ridiculous in the face of it all: Zuko had to address whoever was left in the capital to make sure the public knew there was a successor to the thrown, the Fire Sages had to acknowledge his claim and account for any contests, and Aang had to reassure this corner of the world that he was still alive and had successfully beaten — but not killed — the former Firelord.)

If you asked Katara it was all bureaucratic _nonsense_ that could wait until _after_ the healing of the actual, mortal wounds left by the war that they just won. But nobody did ask her, so she didn’t say anything.

Instead, she helps guide Toph — who's bending Sokka and Zuko on stone slabs — through the parts of the palace with wood floors as they scavenge.

For the most part, the palace seems to be alright. There’s some internal damage from those who fled and some general chaos, but the building is standing and sturdy enough for the night. 

They run into a few servants and guards on the way through. Some offer to help and some just stare pointedly at Zuko’s ghostly pallor, wondering if they should bother pledging allegiance to someone who looks to be one of the walking dead. 

Katara dismisses them, swiftly but indiscriminately, baring her teeth and a few well-thrown ice daggers at the more persistent ones. There’s too much uncertainty, and while world affairs have never been her passion, she knows enough about the temptation of power vacuums to understand that things are too fragile to trust anyone that isn’t them right now.

(Suki said they’d managed to get a hawk sent off to the White Lotus in the hours before they got back to the palace. They'll know to come to the capital, so the gang just has to hold down the fort until at least Iroh makes it back.)

Apparently, the “family physician” from Azula's taunts turns out to be a real person with an office and supplies just off of the kitchen. They load gauze and wooden braces onto the slabs, as well as bruising salves and some sedative herbs. Having come as far as she has as a healer — even a prodigal one — Katara feels overwhelmed at the prospect of responsibility over every cut and bruise they've racked up against her. 

They leave the physician's office and Zuko is just awake enough to guide them to the nearest usable room. 

“It’s the royal medical bay,” he says, voice much more soft and distant than she’d like to hear from someone with his injury. “Usually the family physician makes visits, but if someone’s really sick or an heir is about to be born…” 

There’s space for all of them, which is all that matters.

Thankfully, the carpeted, wood hall gives way to pure stone — Toph smiles, and with a flick of her hand, three large beds are slammed together in a spiked crescent formation in the middle of the room. Katara doesn’t look behind her when the door slams shut on its own ( _metal door_ ) and instead starts to lay everyone out. 

Toph helps to maneuver Sokka onto the first bed where he plops, careful of his leg but unceremoniously, onto the mattress. He’s lucid but tired, the pain in his leg clearly not gone but subsided enough that he can do more than just groan and hiss.

Suki, scratched up and soot-stained but otherwise okay, tries to give him space to stretch when she crawls in beside him. It speaks to how exhausted he is that he only bothers to reach for her fingers with his hand before passing out entirely. 

Katara smiles and smooths the hair on her brother’s forehead. (She will live to be a very old woman, but despite all the time she is blessed with, she will never find the words to express how proud she is of him, if even just in that moment alone.) 

She exchanges a soft smile with Suki before moving on. 

Aang’s deposit is next, if only because he’s still walking upright. He’s able enough to carry himself but seems to unravel completely when his head hits the pillow. 

He cries silently, no sorrow or regret or anger or _anything_ behind it, really. He’s just _so full_ and needs emptying, and it strikes something in her to know there’s nothing she can do about this. (It is now that the end of any possibility of a relationship between them starts: she can’t do this again. She can’t be his _full_ when he’s been emptied out by the world. Sometimes it feels like she has too much _full,_ or not enough, and something in her recognizes that neither are what he needs, aren’t what he’ll ever need.)

He grips her tight when she tries to walk away. Tears stream down his otherwise blank face and he doesn’t say anything for a while. 

Then, “Just— I just need to know you’re okay.”

“Aang, I’m okay," she says. "We’re all okay. We made it out; we _won_.”

The crying stops, if only for a minute. “I _know_ that,” and it starts again. "I just… I just need to _know_.” His voice breaks. "I need to be _sure_.”

She’s seen this before. It happens when the men from her village come back from the war front. Their families gather around them, close, for a number of days — weeks, even — and the soldier grips just as hard. Maybe his hand lingers too long on his wife’s hip during chores. Maybe he holds onto the backs of his children’s parkas too tight before sending them out for the day, if he sends them out at all. 

They don’t have days, but they have a few moments and dammit, Katara is going to give it to him. 

She gestures for Toph to shift Zuko onto the third bed, careful of the wound on his front. He’s awake, too, but isn’t “with them” by most definitions of the word. His eyes are glazed over and unfocused. (For a minute, he reminds her of Azula, sedated and being carted off in chains by the Sages.)

She watches with tight eyes until Zuko is completely flat on his back and breathing. It’s labored breath but it’s _breath_ and that’s all she can really ask for. 

Aang’s hand tightens again in her tunic as she sits on the edge of his bed, rubbing at his head and shoulders and murmuring about how proud she is and happy she is that he’s alive.

“I just want to sleep,” he says. “I did it. _We all_ did it. Can I rest now?”

They don’t have days because, no, in fact now is probably _not_ the best time to sleep. There’s a whole world out there that, even if for the better, just got flipped on its head in a manner of hours. There’s no reason, now, for the colonizing and the pillaging and the imperialism and the violence: after a century of war, a peace-loving Firelord is in power and is friends with the Avatar, who's just proven himself triumphant over evil. The world should be rejoicing, should be rebuilding, should be _hoping_ again. 

And it will, she knows. 

But that new Firelord is conked and drooling a few feet away and the mighty Avatar is crying into her tunic so she thinks that maybe the world can wait. 

After a few minutes, she coaxes Aang into a position flat on his stomach so she can access the scar on his back. As she bends the healing water from her skins, she feels Aang’s chi bent and knotted into grotesque shapes, moving away from the water when she presses further to heal it. 

_It_ _’_ _s like a spirit wound_ , Aang tells her, the look in his eyes a dark mirror to the one he had when they first found Roku’s statue and Aang had just _known_ the man’s name. _I almost lost. Ozai’s energy nearly corrupted me._ _It’s not going to happen like that every time._

And she can’t decide if he reminds her more or less of the kid she pulled out of that iceberg, can’t decide if this _knowing_ is something that rings more true for the child that he is — open, fully, to the Universe’s wonders — or for the thousands of lifetimes he holds in his body. 

Suddenly, the bends smooth and the knots unfurl under her care and she finds it doesn’t matter. This is _Aang,_ but more importantly, this is _family_ and there’s nothing she wouldn’t do for that. 

Sokka is next, his leg throbbing and pulsing as his body tries to stitch itself back together before she can. She beats it to the punch, using the leftover water from Aang’s healing to help his muscles and bones mend faster and straighter than they would on their own. 

It’s not perfect. She can’t reach inside him like she would to bloodbend, but she knows that his body isn’t fitting together quite the same as before. 

Despite this, when she pulls her hands away and bends the water back into her skins, Sokka, still unconscious, sighs in relief and snuggles more firmly against the mattress. 

She looks at Suki curiously, then, and Suki looks back. Katara lifts her arms in a question, _do you want this? Do you need me, too?_ And Suki shakes her head, _move on._ And maybe, on another day, she would press, would run the water over the shallow cuts on Suki's face and the bruises littering the other girl’s body. 

(When she thinks about it later, Katara isn’t sure Suki has ever known how to _need_ before. She remembers seeing the Kyoshi Warriors suit up once and helping each other with eyeliner or protective wraps before and after a battle. But she’s never seen the other girl ask for anything, _need_ anything from anyone other than her Warriors before. She’ll never ask Suki about it, but instead decides to just _do_ when it comes to Suki instead of _ask_ from then on.)

But now, Katara’s _exhausted_ just like the rest of them. 

And she still has a successor to heal.

So, she bows to Suki before watching the girl collapse once more onto the mattress. Aang doesn’t wake when she checks his pulse passing by his bed. It’s the first unburdened rest he’s had in a year ( _in a 100 years, too, probably_ ) and she’s happy for him. She could almost watch it longer, but a groan from the third bed pulls her out of her trance and rushes her forward. 

Toph is kneeling beside the bed, head bent and one hand in Zuko’s. It doesn’t look like her rather fervent grip is being returned, but it seems like he’s sleeping much more peacefully than he was as they trekked through the halls. 

“He’s going to be fine,” Toph says decidedly, but Katara can hear a measure of uncertainty staining her tone. She tilts her head just slightly, a gesture at the other three in the beds behind them. “Everybody’s going to be fine. It would be stupid in anybody died now.”

“I don’t know,” Katara says honestly. “I’ve seen worse. I’ve seen people come back from a lot worse.”

Which is true, but also, “You’ve seen more people come back from a lot better.”

 _Yeah, that._

But this is the long haul and they both know that and Katara has absolutely no intention of leaving anybody behind in this room. 

She thinks it’s obvious enough that she doesn’t even bother saying it before Toph pats Zuko’s hand one last time before climbing to her feet and heading back to the other beds. For a minute, she thinks the girl is going to curl up on Sokka’s other side. But after less than a second of hesitation, she moves on and slides in beside Aang. 

She turns back to look at Zuko with a small smile on her face. ( _Toph could always be **full** enough for all of them. Or, if she couldn’t, she could never be made to feel like she had to be._)

When she zeros back in on Zuko, her smile disappears. 

It’s hard to feel nothing when she looks down at him. First and foremost, she thinks, _yikes_ , and it’s the most definitive proof she’s ever had of her relation to Sokka. 

She looks at the wound on his chest and thinks, _that_ _’_ _s mine. That was meant for me, it was going to be me. He did_ _that for me what in La_ _’_ _s name **why**?_

She looks at the wound on his chest and thinks, _it_ _’_ _ll be another_ _scar,_ _something_ _he has to carry. Maybe with the Oasis water_ _—_ _but even then, it_ _’_ _ll be the second of my family that Azula has marked and it was my_ _fault and he did it for me **why**?_

She looks at the wound on his chest and thinks, _maybe it should have been me,_ and then stops. 

This is the long haul, and she knows that, and what’s been done has been done and now it is time to _heal_. She can wish all she wants to take it all back, to take it away from her friends, to heal retroactively. 

She can wish to take away what this war has done to them all, inside and out: the dead Air Nomads, Yue’s death, battle scars, Toph’s parents, her mother’s death, Zuko’s . . . _everything_. She _does_ wish that she could do all of those things — take all of those things — but she can’t. 

She _can_ heal, though, so she does that instead. 

He’s alive, if only thanks to her triage after taking Azula down. His breath comes in thready bursts and he’s cold to the touch. Her hunch is that standing and speaking so long right after getting hit took more out of him than any of them bargained for, but she can’t know that. The only other lightning victim she’s treated is Aang, and they don’t have any Oasis water handy. 

Apparently, if Zuko is going to make it out of this, it’s going to be between her healing and his will alone.

They’ve had worse odds.

She works for hours — _days_ , maybe, she doesn’t know — until the red sky gives way to blackness and stars behind her. She sweats clean through her tunic and feels her muscles shake with effort, but she never stops. 

He slips from her control, from _life_ , more times in than she can count. That bone-deep exhaustion that rippled through her at the beginning of his healing session is slowly replaced with determination and a _need_ to see him alive again after all he was willing to give up for her. 

She knows little about the gods and spirits that the Fire Nation and its benders pray to, but she’s confident Zuko will not be meeting them tonight.

Finally, when the sun begins to peak through the one window in the room and casts the walls in a rich blue, she can feel that her work is done. It’s like his body was set alight from the inside by the lightning, and she’s returned a good darkness again.

_You rise with the moon. I rise with the sun._

He is rising and she, for all her mastery, is waning. At most, she needs the moon back ( _a full moon, Yue, thanks_ ) and at the very least, she needs rest.

She shakes him a little when his breaths turn into more than just shallow hiccups of air. “Zuko?”

After a few moments, his eyes crack open. He shifts a little and suddenly his hand is jammed into hers and he’s gripping tightly. “Katara.”

They smile at each other before he winces and grabs his side. 

“How’d we do,” he asks, his tone entirely pure and curious before he promptly passes out again. 

She can’t decide if she wants to cry or laugh. Belated, Katara realizes that maybe she should be concerned that he doesn’t remember so much of the day before. However, if this year has taught her anything, near the top of the list would have to be how to pick her battles.

Also near the top: _keep moving_. 

“We need to barricade the door,” she says, more to herself as a statement of fact than anything else. She had frozen the outer locking mechanism, but when she reaches out for it, she finds herself too weak in the morning light to freeze it again.

Toph, raising hand slowly from her mat, decides to take it as an order. “I’m on it."

Katara can’t see what it is that Toph does, but she can hear the metal of the door scream as it contorts to the earthbender’s will. When it stops, Katara manages a look in its direction: the locking mechanism is mangled beyond recognition and the doorframe is fused itself inward as a crumpled seal. 

She sees Toph lower her hand again, curling into Aang’s side before going back to sleep.

 _Good girl,_ she thinks, twisting and sliding to sit on the floor beside Zuko’s bed. She doesn’t let go of Zuko’s hand, letting it anchor her to the room. 

Part of her mind is on the window, oscillating between whether it’s a threat or not. She watches and waits, and figures that’s all she can do until someone joins her in the world of the living again. 

The other part of her mind centers on the warmth building between her and Zuko's palms. 

_It’s life_ , she thinks, and has never been happier to hold someone’s hand before. 

They've fought, they've won, and now they are just so **tired**. 

She doesn’t sleep.

**Author's Note:**

> Let me know what you thought and what you might like to see next!


End file.
